Verjuice has recently become available to British home cooks and chefs alike. This versatile product is made from the unfermented juice of unripe wine grapes, pressed from the green-harvested thinnings that, we are told, are high in acid and low in sugar. Its versatility as a flavour enhancer makes it an excellent alternative to lemon juice, vinegar or wine in your cooking.

Mention plastic food boxes and most people of a certain age will say ‘Tupperware’ whose parties I fondly imagined, at 13, were scenes of some kind of adult depravity. The word party in the 70s often conjured up images that involved Germans and weird pop music for some reason.

The people at Marmite marketing sure do know their stuff. Not only do they have one of the very few ad campaigns running right now that isn’t some peace of meaningless Euro-piffle that could be for anything from mobile phones to building societies, they also keep reinventing the black stuff.

After hearing about these remarkable fruits, it was time to taste some tapas, specially created by Ibèrica Head Chef Santiago Guerrero, all using Spanish raspberries and strawberries. Not necessarily an easy task, given that these fruits aren’t renowned for pairing with meat and fish – but we had open minds.

Gelato Mio’s main focus is the production and sale of their house made ice creams and sorbets. However, as well as being an ice cream parlour, Gelato Mio in Notting Hill is a coffee shop, which has a huge amount of seating for their customers to relax and enjoy a coffee and biscuits or a lovely velvety ice cream from their range, or both.

Soy sauce delivers all the flavour of salt, but at up to half the quantity thanks to the umami effect. This is good news as in the West we all apparently eat too much salt. At the Westminster Kingsway Catering College we find out more, come close to being asphyxiated by a radio host, eat a fine student made meal and learn how to make the perfect gravy.

24th February had been augustly designated as European day of Mozzarrella di Bufala Campana PDO. Its significance is to recognise and protect the provenance of this white soft cheese made from Buffalo milk in the Campania region of Italy.

Yeh mon! To celebrate the launch of the new Reggae Reggae pasty from West Cornwall Pasty Co, entrepreneur and musician Levi Roots is going to be performing live in Covent Garden on Friday 26^th February, with songs from his latest album ‘Red Hot’.

There’s always been, to my mind, something austere, some thing hair shirt, something a little well, Scottish, about porridge. It makes me think of boarding schools in the Glens and young scions of the aristocracy being herded into cold showers at 6am before being forced to eat a bowl of porridge made with water and salt.

To celebrate National Dairy Week the British Cheese Board (BCB) has been asking our favourite celebrity chefs to reveal some of their top tips for cheese. National Dairy Week aims to raise awareness of the nutritional benefits of dairy products, including cheese, and the vital role they can play as part of a healthy, balanced diet.